The last thing VW wants is their customers getting their hands dirty. A clue into VW’s real aspirations is given by the 1999 Audi A2 with its “service panel” in lieu of a conventional hood. Though this was part of a larger panel which could be unbolted to gain access to the engine, the message was clear: The mechanism is none of your business.

But the primary motivation for all this is not so much the savings in manufacturing cost. More important is the industry-wide desire to increase the value of the car’s software/firmware relative to its hard parts. Thanks to legal precedents which have proved extremely robust, hard parts are almost impossible to copyright. As we know, this is not the case with software. Hence the drive to make as great a part of the overall product dependent on copyrightable electronic control. And from there, it is not difficult to figure out where OBD really came from.

If Dieselgate achieves anything for the established motor industry, it will provoke the state into bulletproofing OBD. That would be yet another means by which the unassailable position of the established motor industry is maintained and expanded. And it would be another erosion of your and my control of our living environments.